To speak about hell is not very popular. It never has been nor will it ever be in the future. But it is necessary.
Ted Turner, founder of Turner Broadcasting blasted the Christian faith at a speech to the National Press Club. He said, "Remember, heaven is going to be perfect. And I don’t really want to be there. Those of us that go to hell, which will be most of us in this room, most journalists are certainly going there. But when we get there we’ll have a chance to make things better because hell is supposed to be a mess. And heaven is perfect. Who wants to go to a place that is perfect? Boring, boring."
Also in late 1989, Turner told Dallas Morning News that "Christianity is a religion for losers." Christ died on the cross, but Turner said He shouldn’t have bothered. "I don’t want anybody dying for me. I’ve had a few drinks and a few girlfriends and if that’s gonna put me in hell, then so be it."
Ted Turner, you may be smart when it comes to the world and making money, but you are not a smart man when it comes to the reality of eternity.
On July 16, 1741, Jonathan Edwards stood before his congregation and preached a message titled, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. People began to shake under the conviction of their sins. Some fell to the floor, crying out for mercy. That morning, his church encountered God and the Great Awakening began to sweep across New England.
It’s quite different in most pulpits today. In one article for Newsweek Kenneth Woodward wrote, "Churchgoers take comfort: hell has all but disappeared from modern Christian theology. But this comes at a price."
Another preacher wrote, “Hell, it would seem, has fallen on rather lean times. It used to be that the vast majority of Christians, regardless of denominational affiliation, believed that Hell was a real place where the wicked and the impenitent go when they died. The very thought of the pains and torments of Hell was enough to scare sinners straight. It used to be that ministers of the Gospel would preach on the horrors of Hell to persuade reprobates to repentance. But not anymore. Most American mainline and so-called Evangelical churches stopped preaching about Hell years ago. Most mainline ministers stopped believing in Hell years before that. Hell made people uncomfortable. Hell was too ‘old-fashioned.’ The topic of Hell was bad for the bottom line—attendance and income….”
Our passage today draws a picture of a fishing net that drags all sorts of fish in - good and bad. They were divided and the bad was thrown away.
Some fish and some things in life are not worth much. Perhaps not even worth saving for anyone. They are fit only to be culled and thrown away. And so shall it be in hell.
But the problem is many people just don’t get it. They just don’t understand this eternal, Biblical truth of God. To avoid hell WE MUST UNDERSTAND GOD’S WORD!
Bill Hybels, the pastor of Willow Creek Church in Chicago which has over 20,000 people in attendance each week, tells the story of an encounter he had with a young woman.
He said, “I recall one time being in a restaurant studying for a message, and a gal looked over from her table and saw me reading my Bible. She said, ‘Why do you study that stuff?’ And I thought, just to stimulate a little discussion, I’d try to knock her off balance. So I said, ‘Because I don’t feel like going to hell when I die.’
“I was going to be really blunt, but I took the edge off it a little bit. And she said, ‘There is no such thing as heaven or hell.’ I thought, Well, I got something going now.
“So I turned in my chair and I said, ‘Why do you say that?’ She said, ‘Everybody knows that when you die your candle goes out — poof ’ I said, ‘You mean to tell me there’s no afterlife?’ ‘No.’ ‘So that means you must be able to just live as you please?’ ‘That’s right.’ ‘Like, there’s no Judgment Day or anything?’ ‘No.’
“I said, ‘Well, that’s fascinating to me. Where did you hear that?’ She said, ‘I read it somewhere.’‘Can you give me the name of the book?’ ‘I don’t recall.’ ‘Can you give me the name of the author of the book?’ ‘I forget his name.’ ‘Did that author write any other books?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Is it possible that your author changed his mind two years after he wrote this particular book and then wrote another one that said there is a heaven and a hell? Is that possible?’ ‘It’s possible but not likely.’
“‘All right,’ I said. ‘Let me get this straight. You are rolling the dice on your eternity predicated on what someone you don’t even know wrote in a book you can’t even recall the title of. Have I got that straight?’
“I was playing a little Columbo act with her. She looked me right in the eye and said, ‘That’s right.’ And I said back to her, ‘You know what I think, sweetheart? I think you have merely created a belief that guarantees the continuation of your unencumbered lifestyle. I think you made it up, because it is very discomforting to think of a heaven. It is a very discomforting thought to think of a hell. It is very unnerving to face a holy God in the day of reckoning. I think you made it all up.’ We had quite a conversation after that.”
Like the young woman in Hybel’s story, many people today don’t want to believe in hell, because they do not want to change the way they live. They easily accept anything that smacks of doubt, because it gives them relief from thinking about the reality of eternity. But Jesus wanted people to think about eternity often. In fact, the Bible is almost silent about the subject of hell, except for the words of Jesus. This only makes sense, because we would expect that the One who came from eternity would know and talk about eternity more than anyone else.
Revelation 21:8 “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars — their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
There are multitudes of people who have preconceived ideas about hell or no ideas at all. But in order to avoid hell people need to understand God’s will. And the only place to get that understanding is in God’s Word.
As someone said, “Read the Bible. It will scare hell out of you.” Or will hopefully, scare a person enough to keep them out of hell.
TO AVOID HELL WE MUST LISTEN TO AND UNDERSTAND GOD’S MESSAGE. We need to listen and listen well!
A preacher in the Midwest tells about a young couple in his church who boasted to all their friends and neighbors that they were flying to New York City. They were only going to be able to spend one day there, but the highlight of their trip would be to go see the Broadway play, “My Fair Lady.” They were so proud of this and everyone was really impressed because no one else in that small town had ever been to a play on Broadway.
The day came and when they arrived in New York they took a taxi to the theater where “My Fair Lady” was playing. To their dismay, they found that the play was sold out for the night.
They thought, “What do we do now? Everybody knows that we came to see ‘My Fair Lady.’ We don’t dare tell them that we didn’t.” So they found a couple of ticket stubs on the sidewalk and picked them up. They bought a program that described the various acts of the play. They went home singing “I Could Have Danced all Night.” And they told everybody that they had gone to see “My Fair Lady.”
The preacher said, “That’s right. They had the ticket stubs. They had the program. They had been to the theater. They knew the music. But the trouble is, they didn’t see the performance.”
Many people today are like that. They may go to church occasionally. They may sing the songs, bow their heads and perhaps even give some money, but they never really believed and trusted Christ for their salvation. It was just an act.
Matthew 7:21 “Not everyone who says to me, ’Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
If you are not sure, you need to make sure. You need to put your trust in Christ and in Christ alone. It is the only way to heaven. It is the only way to escape hell.
That is something to think about as you go about your life today.
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